The first year of implementing a strategy to develop the Journal of Sustainable Mining

Last year, 2013, was a time of significant change for the Editorial Office in charge of the journal of the Central Mining Institute (GIG), Katowice. We devised and implemented a development strategy aimed at introducing the Journal of Sustainable Mining to the international community of science. The biggest changes concerned the title, layout, form of publishing, language, as well as beginning cooperation with foreign reviewers.
We changed the title from Prace Naukowe GIG. Górnictwo i Środowisko (English title: Research Reports of the Central Mining Institute. Mining & Environment) to the Journal of Sustainable Mining, which better reflects the content of the papers published in the journal. It also increases international recognition of the journal, which follows the main aim of the adopted development strategy. In 2013 we launched an English-language online version of the journal aimed at the international scientific community. Papers are published on the website of the journal on a daily basis, once all the editorial work on a given text has been completed. This publishing formula guarantees that the content of the journal is up-to-date, relevant and seen by the scientific community immediately. The accuracy of language is monitored and checked by a Language Editor – a native speaker of English. The online version is described as the original (reference) version of the journal, which will be evaluated by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland  and specialist databases. The journal is financed by funds granted to the Central Mining Institute for its statutory activities, thus we provide open access to every issue. We firmly believe that open access to this publication will increase its influence.
We have designed and implemented a layout for the new website for the journal, the address for which is jsm.gig.eu. With consideration to our pre-existing users we retained the option of using the previous address: www.kwartalnik.gig.eu. The website is in English and its artwork uses the same motifs as the new cover of the journal. Since May 2013 we have run website statistics for jsm.gig.eu. Approximately 80% of the traffic on the website of the quarterly journal comes from Poland. Other users were mainly from India, Germany, the USA and China. For most of the visits to the website the link used is the direct URL address. In addition, we observed a number of hits from the main website of GIG (www.gig.eu), from the BazTech database and internet browsers. On the website there is an academic paper search engine, which enables the user to search the content of the Journal of Sustainable Mining by author, title, year or key words. Currently it is not possible to search for the content of our previous title (Prace Naukowe GIG. Górnictwo i Środowisko, years 2002–2012) with the engine as the issues are only available as .pdf files. However, in 2014 we will add the papers published in the previous journal to the archive. We have also introduced the option of subscribing to a newsletter with information on the published papers, their full versions and updates under the “NEWS” bookmark.
We have designed each page with a layout in A4 format which include the following information:
•    The heading of the first page with bibliographic data, publisher’s details and website address.
•    DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
•    Information concerning when the text was received, revised and published online.
•    Copyright details.
•    Details concerning the author to allow for correspon-dence, such as, a telephone number, fax number and
e-mail address, as well as information regarding the authors affiliations, e.g. department, institution, city and country.
•    Information on the source of funding for the piece of work.
In 2014 we are planning to make a few finishing touches to the layout. We will indicate the type of paper (original paper or review paper) and the abstract of each paper will have the following structure: purpose, methods, results, originality/value, practical implications. We will also work on implementing the American Psychological Association (APA) style 6th edition, which will be used in order to format references.
To introduce the quarterly journal to the international scientific community we have started cooperation with a number of overseas reviewers. Although it was a new experience for us, we have managed to collect an extensive pool of reviewers, which we can truly call multinational.
In 2014 we will continue to improve the quality of our journal. We are facing numerous challenges and we relish these challenges. We would like to thank all of the authors and reviewers who cooperated with us in preparing the Journal of Sustainable Mining in 2013. We believe that our joint efforts will enable us to become one of the leading international journals in the field of mining sciences. In future we would like to receive more papers written by authors from abroad. So, if you want to cooperate with us, you are more than welcome!